Judge equates encrypted chats with private thoughts in would-be kidnapping case:
Three men who allegedly plotted to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer will face charges of gang membership, felony firearm possession and providing material support for terrorist acts, but not making terrorist threats. According to a report from the Detroit News, the reason 12th District Court Judge Michael Klaeren dismissed that last charge stems from the way the group interacted with each other. Rather than coordinating out in the open on platforms like Facebook, Joseph Morrison, Pete Musico and Paul Bellar — along with four other men with ties to the Michigan militia group Wolverine Watchmen — used private, encrypted chats to communicate.
[...] "There has to be some form of intent here to incite mayhem," Klaeren said, before noting that using an encrypted communications service was not unlike "thinking the thought to yourself."
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @04:45AM
Oh, sure, it's exactly like thinking a thought and using your shine to share it telepathically with the other main characters.
Michigan hasn't been the same since the Takuro factory shut down. They used to build the Spirit in Flint.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 02 2021, @05:22AM (16 children)
The articles all should be read. I'm not sure I agree with the judge, but he has made it clear that this will not be a kangaroo court.
For a terrorist threat to be made, the threat has to be made to someone. A bunch of people sitting around brainstorming, no matter how heinous the act they are storming, does not constitute a threat being made to anyone. Private communications among that group are private, no threat is communicated.
I wonder why no charges of conspiracy? I thought that was standard fare, for anything and everything involving more than one person.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @06:13AM (9 children)
Not a threat, not a public declaration, just a chat, like the one on Parler where some dude going by the handle "Runaway1956" said "Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence!" to himself and several thousand other batshit insane right-wing nut-jobs who were contemplating attacking the one national representative body, to stop a fair election, because they were stupid, and an ex-president told them to. Can't get much more "just thinking out loud to myself" than that! BTW, Runaway, Feds showed up at your homestead, yet? Might be time to forget the boogerloo, and concentrate on the bugger off, or bug out, as your type calls it. I hear that Mexico is lovely this time of year, close, and you don't need a passport.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @06:29AM
-1 Troll? Or tacit admission of guilt! Traitors! Slime-sucking Lime Lizards of the destruction of democracy! You will be found out, prosecuted, and only now, at the end, will you realize what a stupid idiot you were, and how easily Murdock, Fox News, and Trump played for the fool. Idiot.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday April 02 2021, @11:49AM (6 children)
Has he actually said anything like that on Gab or Parler or whatever? I haven't had time to hunt down the text dumps. If you know something, by all means please share it. Preferably with the FBI.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @12:57PM (5 children)
Are you sure you are lesbian?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @02:30PM (2 children)
Are you sure this is not the green site?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @04:28PM
Looks more and more like it eveyday. Actually, looks more and more like kuro5hin, with the same kind of deranged people driving everyone else to post ac or quit.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday April 03 2021, @01:09PM
I'm never sure it's not the green site. It always looks green, anyway.
I read it in one of the classic dark modes, looking like an ancient green-on-black monitor from the days of MSDOS.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday April 03 2021, @12:46AM (1 child)
Uhh, yes? I tried to make myself like boys in high school but it never worked. Men just don't make me feel anything, you know? I don't know what it's like for men who like women, but will ask: do you get kind of shivery and melty and a little weak when you see a pretty woman? Like, does your heart race a little and it gets a bit hard to breathe? That's what happens with me, and no boy or man ever did that.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Saturday April 03 2021, @04:06PM
Uh,... no,... but cute puppies get me every time. Then if you take one home it pees all over your carpet, chews through your USB cable, keeps you awake by crying all night and tracks mud everywhere. Even after you get it trained, it constantly requires food, vet visits, long walks by the beach and rewards you with inappropriate barking at FedEx trucks/personnel and crotch-sniffing every one you invite into your house.
Over time, you learn that the shivery, melty, weak feeling is a signal to run, not walk, in some opposite direction.
--
Oh, yeah,... and over time one learns that the pretty women are quite often the wicked ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @03:27PM
Plotting with the voices in your head does not constitute conspiracy.
(Score: 0, Troll) by aristarchus on Friday April 02 2021, @06:45AM
Just a reminder, never rely on Runaway's opinions on legal matters, because not only is he not a lawyer, he is barely literate, uneducated, and a moron. Probably a traitor and an Oaf Keebler, too. He is inciteful. In a legally liable sense.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @09:10AM (1 child)
There's two kinds of threats. One is the "act of threatening someone", which you use, which indeed requires a victim. But there's also the "substantive risk of a negative/dangerous event occurring", which doesn't require a snowflake feeling directly threatened. It merely requires the possibility of as-yet-unidentified-victims to be harmed in the future.
You know, like climate change. Just because the people who will suffer the worst consequences haven't been born yet, doesn't mean it's not a threat.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 02 2021, @02:15PM
Threat is such a vague term. The judge properly said "incite". You can't incite someone to something without communication to someone who doesn't already agree, or at least pretend to agree, with you. So discussions in a closed group can be conspiracy, but not incitement.
You do distinguish two different meanings of the term "threat", but threat is not, in-and-of-itself, a crime. Chess players routinely threaten to win or lose a game.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 02 2021, @12:01PM
Yup, pretty much exactly this. Threats require at least attempting to communicate the threat to someone not to be participating in the threatened actions. This pretty much entirely rules out private conversations with any conspirators.
"I'm going to punch you in the face." Threat.
"Let's go punch him in the face." Not a threat unless it's intentionally said loud enough for "him" to also hear.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 02 2021, @03:55PM (1 child)
It can always be added now. No?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 02 2021, @05:15PM
Don't know. It seems that prosecutors typically go into the arraignment with their guns fully loaded. We don't usually see charges added after the court hearings have already begun. It's part of the plea bargaining process, after all. Hit the defendant early with charges that could imprison him for 1000 years, then bargain it down to only 150 years in prison.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.